I will begin with some questions: If Buddhism is to be successfully transplanted in the U.S., does it need a monastic Sangha as its cornerstone? Must there be a monastic Sangha at all, or is Buddhist monasticism an outdated institution? Can the teachings flow entirely through a “lay Sangha,” through lay teachers and communities of lay practitioners? If monastics are necessary, what should their role be? What their duties? What changes in lifestyle and orientation, if any, are required by the new conditions imposed by the Western culture in which Buddhism has taken root?

Spiritual capitalism doesn’t mean prayer sessions on the shop floor and guided meditations in the boardroom. At least it doesn’t have to. What it does mean is the success of an enterprise is measured by values like “integrity” and “commitment” as much as by targets like “efficiency” and “profitability.” It’s based on the recognition that every businessperson—whether you’re the CEO of a major multinational or the head of your own small firm—is in the service industry, and the services rendered must benefit not just yourself and your shareholders, but the planet and other people as well. The first commandment of the growing spiritual-capitalism movement is: Taking care of business means taking care of others.

Audio in MP3 - Several times a year Gil Fronsdal offers a 5-week instructional series for beginning meditators. These classes provide a good overview of insight meditation practice as well as many guided meditation sessions which help the student learn how to establish and sustain a daily meditation practice. The "Intro to Mindfulness Meditation" web page includes audio files in MP3 from each class and class handouts with home work assignments in PDF.

Audio in MP3 - An extension
class taught in
a simple, non-technical way through stories, humor and personal
insights at Loyola
Marymount University in
Los Angeles, California titled, "Integrating
Buddhist Practices Into Everyday Life." It was
a four week class... Sept. 28 - Oct. 19, 2006. More than
anything else, it was an overview of the Buddhist path and an
introduction to a Buddhist way of life.

Audio in MP3 - Jesus counseled his followers to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, and for centuries, mystical union with God—understood as perfect love and omniscient wisdom—was the ideal of Christian contemplatives. Buddha counseled his followers to realize perfect freedom from suffering by irreversibly dispelling all the afflictions and obscurations of the mind. The ideals of personal liberation and perfect enlightenment have been pursued by Buddhist contemplatives over the past 2,500 years.

Audio in MP3 - Physicists have long assumed that the universe is fundamentally composed of matter and energy and that life and consciousness are accidental byproducts of configurations of matter. But a growing number of distinguished physicists are now suggesting that consciousness may play a much more fundamental role in nature than scientists previously believed.

Jotipalo Bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk from the Abhayagiri
Buddhist Monastery, in Redwood Valley, California and
Austin Stewart from Gunnison, Colorado completed an
1,800-mile walking pilgrimage from New Orleans, Louisiana
to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The plan was to dedicate
any merit from the pilgrimage to peace, both individual
peace for all beings and for world peace.

Ajahn
Pasanno: I was raised in northern Manitoba, 600 miles north
of the U.S. border. My religion was Anglican, which is Episcopalian
in the U.S. I had a good experience growing up as a Christian.
It was a small town and a small church. My family was reasonably
devout. My father had grown up in the United Church, and we took
religious classes together. But by the time I was 16 or 17, I found
it difficult to maintain any kind of faith. I stopped going to
church and taking communion. I started to look for alternatives.

Audio in MP3 - The
joys and teachings of dharma flow through every human activity. The creation of sound and rhythm in the midst of
space and silence has always helped people wake up to life. Music
flourished in specific ways in every culture around the world,
and it has the ability to cut through our perceived differences.
Insight Meditation Center brings together three Western practitioners
of Buddhism and of music. Their folk-rooted acoustic music combines
tradition and innovation much as our practice here in California
does the same. But the bottom line is that we can share and enjoy
this music together.

What
happens when an ancient Asian spiritual tradition takes root
in a brash young democracy? Ask the world’s leading Buddhist
teachers and thinkers this question, and you have Buddhism in
America, Volume I, a historic collection
of the most provocative and insightful sessions from the respected Buddhism
in America national conferences. Here are the sometimes iconoclastic, always
brilliant visions of those who are mapping out the present and future of
American Buddhism.

NEWPORT,
Wash. – Eyes closed, heads bowed, hands together in prayer,
the 10 women and men inside the log cabin meditate in silence. "Through
purity, freeing from attachment, through virtue freeing from
the lower realm," they later chant out loud, sitting on
cushions on the floor before an ornate altar to the Buddha. "…To
the Dharma that is peace, I bow."

Reverend Heng Sure, a Buddhist monk living in a Berkeley
monastery, hopes to reach Western audiences by podcasting his lectures
on Eastern philosophy and veganism... When Reverend Heng Sure, Ph.D.
isn't meditating at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery or teaching
at the Graduate Theological Union,
he's recording lectures for his podcast and composing on his 12-string
acoustic guitar.

We
are two monastic communities, Mahayana Buddhist and Benedictine
Catholic, who have used a piece of Loreena McKennitt's
music for our worship. We have recorded a song called (alternately) "Dedication
of Merit," and "Compassionate and Wise."

Once
in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun
Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse
to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing
beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting
beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion,
each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

The
use of psychedelic drugs is that dark little secret behind
the popular origins of Eastern spirituality in America, but
if they really open the mind in the same ways meditative experiences
do, why shouldn't they be legitimated and brought out into
the open? In Allan Hunt Badiner and Alex Grey's Zig Zag Zen
authors, artists, priests, and scientists are brought together
to discuss this question. Opinions fall on all sides. Ram Dass,
for instance, discusses the benefits as well as the limitations.
Rick Fields sets the historical scene. China Galland offers
a wrenching personal experience. Lama Surya Das tells of his
early drug years. And a roundtable discussion with Ram Dass,
Robert Aitken, Richard Baker, and Joan Halifax caps it all.

Subjective experience is orchestrated
by vast networks of living brain cells. Empirical studies are
now encountering depths and nuances of experience in religion
and spirituality previously unknown to science. Meditation,
the central contemplative practice of Buddhism, trains attentive
skills which mediate profound observations of subtle human experience,
and is receiving great scientific interest, fueled by recently
developed functional brain imaging methods. The subtleties
of spiritual experience are explored from a neuroscience view
that delineates the pivotal roles of attention and intercellular
communication within the nervous system.

Fr.
Kevin Hunt, a former member of the board of Monastic Interreligious
Dialogue, is a monk of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer,
Massachusetts. As announced in the Board News section of this
bulletin, he was installed as a Zen teacher (sensei) on April
17 of this year. He kindly agreed to write the following account
of how he came to undertake Zen training. - Copyright MID /
www.monasticdialog.com

Having
spent three years in seclusion, Gainesville's David Bole is
now a lama in the Tibetan tradition... As we turn
50, we become acutely aware that we are running out of time. David
Bole's response to that awareness was to embark
on a journey of the mind, a journey that placed him in a 3-foot-by-3-foot
box 14 to 16 hours a day... In November 2000, Bole, a Gainesville
acupuncturist, left for a Buddhist retreat at a meditation center
in the Catskill Mountains
in Upstate New York - a retreat that lasted for three years, three
months and three days.

What follows is my effort at showing the relevance
of Buddhism to western psychotherapy, especially existential therapy.
Although it may not sit well with purists, I hope that this article
captures the spirit of the Buddha's message.

From time immemorial, man has been preoccupied with
the pursuit of happiness in life, from the cradle to the grave.
He works and struggles very hard to attain happiness, very often
without knowing exactly what happiness means because of his ignorance
of the nature of life. Although all religions provide advice and
guidelines for their adherents to practice in order to attain happiness
in life, more often than not, these advices and guidelines are
ignored owing to man's craving, hatred and illusion.

From
the first Chinatown temples through the Beat era and into the
21st century, Buddhism has been contributing to the cultural
palette of the Bay Area and California. So when Jacquelynn
Baas, former director of the Berkeley Art Museum, heard about
nascent efforts among New York curators to examine Buddhism's
influences in Western art, she suggested that something like
this ought to be done on the West Coast as well. "Buddhism
has been an important presence in American cultural life for
generations," Baas said, "and historically, demographically,
this is where a lot of it really happened."

With their traditional garb suspending time to another
era, a group of Buddhists from Shasta Abbey made a traditional
alms round in Mount Shasta last week from the Lake Street Shopping
Center through downtown... Dressed in Buddhist robes and carrying
specially prepared alms bowls, the monks did not speak. The lead
monk rang
a soft bell
and tapped a cane on the ground.

One
of the cornerstones of Zen Guitar is that, as we are unique people,
so will our experience with the guitar be unique. Each person
discovers his or her own way. In my experience, the practice
of Zen guitar means many things.

The
poster for "The Matrix Reloaded" says "Free Your
Mind."... But didn't we do that the
last time? Didn't Morpheus, Trinity and Neo help us escape from
the prison we "cannot
smell or taste or touch"? Hasn't the path to enlightenment
unfolded before us?... Didn't we already swallow the red pill?

The
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, whose latest book, Welcome
to the Desert of the Real (Verso, 2002), references The Matrix
in its title, compares the first installment of the Wachowski
brothers’ three-part sci-fi spectacle to one of those spooky
paintings of God that always seems to be staring back at you,
no matter where you stand in the room. In a similar play of perspective,
The Matrix and its sequel, The Matrix: Reloaded, also seem capable
of reflecting almost any critical gaze back at the viewer. Just
ask any philosophically minded group of people who haven’t
been living in Plato’s cave for the last four years what
they see in the films, and they will offer you readings that
reference everything from postmodern simulation to Christian
Gnosticism, Zen Buddhism, and French psychoanalysis.

WITH
HIS SHAVED head and tattoos, Noah Levine is right at home on
the Warped Tour with hard core punk bands like Rancid, Poison
the Well and Suicide Machines... But Levine
is a punk rocker with a passion for more than angry, defiant music.
A self-described "spiritual
revolutionary," he
has "wisdom" and "compassion" tattooed on his
hands and images of Buddha and Krishna on his arms.

The
robe is black, with a rope around the waist and fabric that drapes
voluminously through the sleeves. So now, as Mike Zimmerman stands
before his teacher and prepares to sit, he must arrange the robe
just so, folding and tucking and folding some more...
He once was chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court. In those days
he wore
a different black robe, but that was then and this
is now, and, as any Buddhist knows, then is not so important. In
those days he sat on the bench. Now he is sitting, cross-legged,
on the floor.

Today's
riddle: What's red and green and yellow and blue and white
and flapping in the wind outside an increasing number of Eugene
homes and businesses?... Answer:
A thousand prayers for peace. Or, more specifically, strings of brightly
colored Tibetan
Buddhist prayer flags.

MADISON, WISCONSIN— Madison
police Capt. Cheri Maples wants to bring peace back to police
work... She helped recruit
Thich Nhat Hanh, an internationally known Buddhist monk and scholar,
to shed light on how police officers and other
community workers can achieve peace.

A
Dharma Talk at the IBMC --- Zen has had a significant religious
impact in America for at least half a century. For most of
that time its influence has been limited to literature and
the arts in addition to a small, but growing, sangha of ordained
teachers and practitioners. In recent years, however, popularized
notions of Zen have entered the cultural mainstream of American
society so that Zen has become a trendy buzzword.

There was something very different about Donald Pham.
Even as a child, he seemed strangely wise. His parents came to
believe that he was a monk in his previous life and should study
in India. We follow his arduous path as a Tibetan Buddhist monk
in a four-part series.

MARY
ALICE WILLIAMS: Buddhism is the world's fourth largest religion,
founded about 2500 years ago in India. The Buddha taught that
life is suffering and the way to overcome that is to get rid
of attachments. Widely practiced across Asia, Buddhism has
attracted many converts in this country. They are developing
forms of Buddhist practice that are often very different from
the practices of Asian-Americans. Some observers believe there
is a growing ethnic divide in American Buddhism. Correspondent
Kim Lawton has our cover story.

For
more than a century, Buddhism has been on a remarkable ride in
America. It has gone from the marginal religion of Chinese and
Japanese immigrants on the West Coast (plus a few eccentric Euro-Americans
who dabbled in Theosophy and spiritualism) to a religion practiced
by millions of Americans throughout the country and known, at
some level at least, to millions more through books, magazines,
television, and movies.

Very
little about Buddhism is universal. There are as many different
paths of Buddhism as there are branches of Christianity, each
with its own take on what is true. For example, some practitioners
of Vipassanna don't consider what they practice a religion,
or even call themselves Buddhists.

One
of the central ideas in Buddhism is that life is a classroom and
the main subject is suffering. As much as we don't like it, without
these challenges we don't gain the wisdom to graduate to the next
level of consciousness.

The
route was a lot less roundabout than you might think. Like many
college students, I was obsessed with deciding what to do with
my life. Business, government, academia: I couldn't see myself
finding happiness in any of them. I didn't want to lie on my deathbed,
looking back at a life frittered away. Fortunately, in my sophomore
year, I was introduced to Buddhist meditation, and I took to it
like a duck to water.

Experience
for yourself whether your local Dharma center or organization represents
the diversity of America. If a particular racial group is dominant
at the center or organization ask yourself, "What would be
the experience of someone not represented by this group, if they
were to come here?", "What would someone not from the
majority group have to do to fit in?".

During
the past two decades, research on Buddhism in North America has
expanded tremendously. This bibliography is meant to serve as a
preliminary guide to the main scholarly accounts on the history,
development
and state of affairs of Buddhism in the U.S.A. and Canada.

My
topic is Buddhism in the 21st century, the legacy we are leaving
our children. My first concern is a housekeeping concern. Have
we set the American Buddhist house in order? Specifically, if our
children wish to continue the traditions of Buddhist practice,
what are we doing to make that possible?

Despite
Buddhism's growing presence in the West, most Americans still badly
misunderstand this ancient world religion. The leaders of Philadelphia's
Thai community were rudely reminded of this unpleasant fact during
the 1980s when they set out to buy land for a Buddhist temple and
monastery not far from the City of Brotherly Love.

Buddhism
is big news in America these days. Whether through a New York Times
article carrying the Dalai Lama's latest remarks or a CNN spot
on a political fund-raising scandal at a Taiwanese branch temple
in Los Angeles, whether by seeing Bernardo Bertolucci's Little
Buddha or following Tina Turner's life story in What's Love Got
to Do With It?, Americans have become more aware than ever before
of something called "Buddhism."

Buddhism's
dramatic growth in Western countries, observable for about the
past three decades, has been accompanied by an increased number
of Buddhist books and scholarly studies. Whereas the former publications
focus mainly on personal experiences and religious expositions
given by Buddhist practitioners, the latter historically describe
and sociologically analyze developments of the transplantation
and adaptation of Buddhist traditions in Western countries.

MONK (Rev. Kusala): Then you have the human world,
that's where we are... BETTY ANN BOWSER: This comparative religion
class at a suburban Los Angeles public high school recently had a
lesson
on Buddhism
taught by a monk.

This
year the host was Vajrapani Institute, situated in Boulder Creek,
California. Our monastic conferences originally started for Western
monastics to gather together and spend time learning about each
other's work and practices in the West as well providing an opportunity
for us to be rejuvenated in a monastic setting. In this same spirit,
this conference was open to monastics from all Buddhist traditions
and cultures, but is particularly for monastics born or raised
in the West, who follow traditional vows, which include observing
celibac

This
8th Monastic Conference focused on the theme True to the Source
through a variety of methods: direct exposure ~ through our contact
with one another and on-site tours given by resident monastics
of both the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and Abhayagiri Monasteries;
contemplation ~ through collective meditation and listening;
and communication ~ through informal conversation and storytelling,
as well as four traditional Councils centered on the topics below.

Gathered
on September 19-21, 2001 at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech
Grove, Indiana to launch and discuss the book, Benedict's Dharma:
Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of St. Benedict, edited by Patrick
Henry and published by Riverhead Press... Hosted by Sister
Mary Margaret Funk and Fr. William Skudlarek, the conference was
convened only just over a week after the events
of September 11, the conference was without two participants in
the book, Joseph Goldstein and Norman Fischer, who felt it was
more appropriate to be with their Buddhist communities at the time.
However, the editor, Patrick Henry, and contributors Judith Simmer-Brown
and Ven. Yifa were able to attend, along with about 100 attendees,
both from Buddhist and Christian communities

The theme of the October 2001 conference was Monastic
Training. The presentation topics were Upholding the monastic tradition
in the West - What are the essentials?, Adaptation to the West, Transforming
Worldly People into Monastics, Heart of the Life, and Where are we
Going? These discussions provided opportunities to broaden our understanding
of the topics and expand our capacity to work within our own communities
and gain greater appreciation and understanding of other communities
in these areas...

The
Web's first comprehensive collection of links and resources
on contemporary Buddhist women. Female teachers, activists,
scholars, nuns, and yoginis (practitioners) may be found
on these pages, as well as teachings and special events,
projects, organisations, bibliographic and contact information.
We also offer a complete guide to the many female meditational
deities found in Tibetan Buddhist practice.

Mary
Beth Jiko Oshima-Nakade, 43, trained entirely in Hawaii for
her job as assistant minister at Daifukuji Soto Mission in
Kona — a trend other major Buddhist sects watch with
interest. The Soto Zen ministerial training program has been
called a hope for the survival of the religion here, as members
age and the face of traditional ethnic Buddhism changes.

If anyone wanted to present Buddhism as a viciously
sexist religion, they could easily do so by quoting out of context
passages from numerous sutras or from more recent texts such as Shinran's
wasan (poems) or the by-laws of the Shinshu Otani-ha (Higashi Honganji's
denomination) which denies female clergy the same status as male
priests. But I believe the essential spirit of Buddhism absolutely
includes all beings, male and female, in its vision of enlightenment.
If I did not believe in that then I would not want to be a part of
this religious tradition. In this intermittent series, I hope to
make it clear that women have always been involved in Buddhist history
and that their role has been very crucial even if often overlooked.

An account of some famous women who figure prominently
in the early Buddhist texts is given in the following pages. The
account will show that women were not a negligible factor in the
ancient Buddhist community of India.

The ancient commentaries give us information about
each nun's background and also explain the poems themselves. Two
major themes of relevance to contemporary students of the Dhamma
run through these stories: (1) the immeasurably long time that we
have all been lost in samsara, the round of birth and death; and
(2) the working of the impersonal law of kammic cause and effect
which brought these women into contact with the Buddha's teachings
in what was to be their final lifetime.

Today, when the role of Women in Society is an issue
of worldwide interest it is opportune that we should pause to look
at it from a Buddhist perspective. In the recent past, a number of
books have been written on the changing status of women in Hindu
and Islamic societies, but with regard to women in Buddhism, ever
since the distinguished Pali scholar, Miss I.B. Horner, wrote her
book on Women under Primitive Buddhism, as far back as 1930, very
little interest has been taken in the subject.

At the time of the Buddha, a daughter was born to the
foreman of the guild of garland-makers in Savatthi. She was beautiful,
clever and well behaved and a source of joy to her father... One day,
when she had just turned sixteen, she went to the public flower gardens
with her girl-friends and took three portions of fermented
rice along in her basket as the day's sustenance.

To
become a bhikkhuni a woman had to begin by asking for 'ordination'
as a sikkhamana (meaning a woman in training) before an assembly
of at least 5 bhikkhunis. Her training consisted of 6 rules: the
Five Precepts, the third of which being extended to complete celibacy,
plus abstaining from eating outside of the morning time. Only when
she had kept these six rules UNBROKEN FOR TWO YEARS could she,
with the permission of her parents and husband, take higher ordination
as a bhikkhuni.

"He who attends on the sick attends on me," declared
the Buddha, exhorting his disciples on the importance of ministering
to the sick. This famous statement was made by the Blessed One when
he discovered a monk lying in his soiled robes, desperately ill with
an acute attack of dysentery. With the help of Ananda, the Buddha
washed and cleaned the sick monk in warm water.

Today, my talk is especially addressed to the sick
and old persons. The reason for this talk is that there was a Buddhist
layperson who came and asked if I could give a small Dharma talk
to his parents who were old and dying - and because he wanted his
parents to be alert, clear-minded when the time came.

Frank Ostaseski is the Founding Director of the Zen
Hospice Project, a nationally recognized programme of conscious care
for the dying in San Francisco. Inspired by the 2,500-year-old Buddhist
tradition of contemplating sickness, old age and death, the Zen Hospice
Project encourages and supports a mutually beneficial relationship
between volunteer caregivers and individuals facing death. This innovative
model of conscious care provides a spectrum of collaborative volunteer
programmes, residential care, and training which aim at cultivating
wisdom and compassion through service. Founded in 1987, the Zen Hospice
Project is the oldest and largest Buddhist hospice in America.

To the average man death is by no means a pleasant
subject or talk for discussion. It is something dismal and oppressive
-- a veritable kill-joy, a fit topic for a funeral house only. The
average man immersed as he is in the self, ever seeking after the
pleasurable, ever pursuing that which excites and gratifies the senses,
refuses to pause and ponder seriously that these very objects of
pleasure and gratification will some day reach their end.

All the teachings of the Buddha had one goal -- the
elimination of all suffering, all grief, misery, pain and anguish.
All the kinds of meditation he explained were designed to train the
mind of the student to become detached from all the phenomena of
the world, within and outside of himself. This is the aim of Buddhist
meditation because detachment is the opposite of tanha or craving
and it is this tanha that is the source of all the sorts of suffering
experienced by sentient beings.

Many religious leaders consider themselves prophets whose authority
stems from an Almighty God, but as our epithet implies, the Buddha's
relationship to divinity was very different. He instructed deities,
as well as humans, on how to end all suffering (dukkha) by eradicating
ignorance and other unwholesome states. The gods came to the Buddha
to request instruction and clarification, to support his Sasana
or Dispensation, to praise his incomparable qualities, and to pay
homage at his feet. Devas and brahmas are often mentioned throughout
the Pali Canon.

The Dharmacakrapravartana Sutra is known as the first
sermon given by the Buddha. Buddha was born Siddartha Gautama in
the land of the Shakyas in northern India. He was a prince and
lived a life of luxury. He was uninterested in being a king and
was often found meditating on the mysteries of life.

The
essay that forms the first part of this booklet, bears in its German
original the title Pabbajja which, in Pali, the
language of the Buddhist texts, means Going forth, namely from the
household life to the homelessness of a Buddhist monk.

The
two crucial aspects of the Buddha's Awakening are the what and
the how: what he awakened to and how he did it. His awakening
is special in that the two aspects come together. He awakened
to the fact that there is an undying happiness, and that it can
be attained through human effort.

There
are two basic premises in Buddhism based on which I propose to
talk to you on this subject of animal rights this evening. At
the very outset, it is good to remind ourselves that more than
two and half millennia ago, the Buddha had a vision of the universe,
not as one created by any one at any specific point of time,
but as one which has evolved itself through both time and space.

I
was raised in the Jim Crow era of the Southern United States.
In 1963, I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, after
winning scholarships to universities, my family suffered
a cross-burning by the KKK. IN 1967-68, I went to India and
met the Tibetans. In 1969, after a cross-burning at Cornell,
I joined an armed upraising of students. After that I had
to choose between joining the Black Panther Party or returning
to Nepal to study in a Buddhist monastery. Ultimately, I
chose peace.

Because
kamma is directly concerned with good and evil, any discussion
of kamma must also include a discussion of good and evil. Standards
for defining good and evil are, however, not without their problems.
What is "good," and how is it so? What is it that we
call "evil," and how is that so?

The
coexistence of a pacifist ethic and a military tradition creates
an apparent contradiction. In an attempt to better understand
this paradox, I studied the treatment of the military in the
Pali Canon.[2] The general focus of my studies is the interaction
between a pacifist religion, in this case Theravada Buddhism,
and the military apparatus that protects the country within which
this religion is found.

In
his 1983 paper "The 'Suicide' Problem in the Pali Canon," Martin
Wiltshire wrote: "The topic of suicide has been chosen not
only for its intrinsic factual and historical interest but because
it spotlights certain key issues in the field of Buddhist ethics
and doctrine."

It
is quite clear from a variety of sources that abortion has been
severely disapproved of in the Buddhist tradition. It is also equally
clear that abortion has been tolerated in Buddhist Japan and accommodated
under exceptional circumstances by some modern Buddhists in the
U.S.

Political
events in the course of this century, however, have forced the
issue of human rights to the top of the agenda. [5] The Chinese
invasion of Tibet, the bitter ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, and
the experience of military dictatorship in countries such as Burma
have all provided contemporary Buddhism with first-hand experience
of the issues at stake.

The
prohibition on taking human life is one of the cornerstones of
Buddhist ethics, but there is often confusion about the interpretation
of this prohibition in different contexts. In his commentary on
the third paaraajika in the Samantapaasaadikaa, Buddhaghosa sets
out to clarify the legal provisions of the monastic precept against
taking life. The root text and his comments on it are relevant
to the contemporary debate on euthanasia, and this paper considers
what light Buddhist jurisprudence can shed on this moral dilemma.

Buddhists often tend to disregard economics completely,
because the monastic way of life idealized by Buddhism is economically
very minimalist. Such neglect of comment concerning economic values
is not warranted, however, because the Buddhist scriptures are in
fact rich with advice from the Buddha regarding sound economic values
-- and they are applicable to monastic and lay lifestyles alike.

In
recent times many books have been written on the subject of economics
and economic theory, all of them either from the Capitalist or
Socialist point of view. Neither of these systems pays attention
to, nor considers the inner development of man as an important
factor in the growth of society. Hence there has been a rapid deterioration
in human values and standards of behaviour in all classes of society.

The
Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least
threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties;
to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other
people in a common task; and to bring forth goods and services
needed for a becoming existence.

In this small volume, Venerable Dhammapitaka (P. A.
Payutto) offers a Buddhist perspective on the subject of economics.
While not seeking to present a comprehensive Buddhist economic theory,
he provides many tools for reflection, ways of looking at economic
questions based on a considered appreciation of the way things are,
the way we are.

In "Buddhist
Economics", for example, E.F. Schumacher tries to show us
that Buddhism offers an alternative spiritual approach that could
help not only the advanced nations but also those nations that
are confronting scientific and technological development in an
effort to improve the conditions of life in poor regions.

As the field of socially engaged Buddhism (SEB) has
developed, there has never been a coherent or systematic attempt
to create an authoritative basis for the work of SEB. Many of our
elders, including Joanna Macy, Thich Nhat Hanh, Robert Aitken Roshi
and others have all written movingly on the socially engaged imperative.
Yet most have operated in isolation.

Awareness,
dependent origination, and impermanence are all important
concepts in Buddhism. Can these concepts be applied to
our everyday interaction with the environment? When looking
at the Coke can you are about to throw “away” (just
where IS “away”?), just what are you aware
of?

It is the manifest suffering and folly in the world
that invokes humane and compassionate social action in its many
different forms. For Buddhists this situation raises fundamental
and controversial questions. And here, also, Buddhism has implications
of some significance for Christians, humanists and other non-Buddhists.

In this study, I define violence as that which harms,
debases, dehumanizes or brutalizes human beings, animals or the natural
world; and the violent person, as one who causes harm in speech or
action, either directly or indirectly, or whose mind is filled with
such thoughts. [2] The approach will be scriptural, and the resource
I use will be the Pali texts.

Because
of its emphasis on individual salvation, Buddhism is often seen
as a quietist religion that fails to consider societal problems.
This is, of course, a gross exaggeration. Mahayana Buddhism is
bodhisattva ideal, Pure Land doctrine, and Maitreyanism, which
often appeared in China in times of political instability, both
reach past the individual to relate Buddhist soteriology to society
as a whole.

While
that may not have been the Buddha himself people saw cycling
past them down North State Street this past Sunday, it
may well have been the spirit of the Buddha. On bikes decorated
with multicolored prayer flags flapping in the wind, 60
riders, supported by more than 20 volunteers, came together
for a unique two-day event.

Two
American Buddhist monks on a journey of a lifetime, from
downtown Los Angeles
to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talamage,California. A
journey of more
than 800 miles thattook two years and nine months to complete.

In
this same spirit of peace we (University Buddhist Association
at UCLA and friends) commemorated their efforts on Saturday
May 8th by walking 14 miles in their footsteps from the International
Buddhist Meditation Center along Wilshire Blvd. to the campus
of UCLA - at Sunset Canyon.